25 marzo 2012

Particles は and が

Hey! This is going an important post! :)

Today I'll introduce the particles は and が. I'll try to make it simple but actually these two particles, は and が, are kinda tough for Japanese learners as sometimes it is difficult to know when to use one or another.

は is one of the Japanese particles. Although the hiragana は is pronounced "ha", when used as a particle it is pronounced as "wa".

I'm no pro explaining things but thinking that the particle は had to stick with the subject you were going to talk about helped a lot. Also there's an unsaid rule that you should only use は once per sentence. So if you've already said it once in a sentence and you want to introduce another thing in the sentence you have to use が.

Summarizing, both show what is the subject but は emphasizes what comes AFTER and が emphasizes what comes BEFORE.

This pattern is very complicated to translate so it's better to think of it as: "As for A, B is ______".

Instead of です, you can say other things, such as じゃありません, でした, じゃありませんでした...が です。

Examples that I hope helps everyone understand:

私はリオターです。I am Rioter.

私がリオターです。I am Rioter. [The importance is on the "I". This could be used, for example, if some asks "Who is Rioter?", so you answer "I am Rioter." ~me, not anyone else, it's me~ ]

私は猫が好きです。 I like cats. (Or more literally: "As for me, cats are liked (by me)" Oh my... This sounds so weird D: But it's the best I can do. The more you understand the structures this way, the more Japanese-like mind you'll be able to have :)

(Yes, I used Kanji and Katakana which I haven't yet made a post about. Don't worry! :) 私 is read わたし, and リオター is read りおたあ )